On November 4, the world is going to find out the answer to the question that everyone is asking. Can the blue-collar bubbas of the US actually bring themselves to elect a president who is — how to put this? — this bad at bowling?

Perhaps wisely, John McCain has steered clear of any such sporting photo ops, though he did reveal a degree of sports-geekiness in his book Faith Of My Fathers, stating that when he was interrogated as a POW he "gave the names of the Green Bay Packers offensive line, and said they were members of my squadron". Besides which he can always bask in the reflected glamour that comes from his wife's drift racing habit. Yes, drift racing. As in The Fast And the Furious 2: Tokyo Drift.

Fact is we already have the answer to the bowling question, because as bad as Obama is, he's nothing like as hopeless as George H W Bush. Obama at least manages to stay on his feet.

Bush Sr was a slick-fielding first baseman for Yale University after the second world war, and played in two College World Series. He even captained the team, and was apparently "a lifetime .354 hitter with two home runs and 23 RBI's in 175 at-bats" though that sounds suspiciously good to me. Sadly there's no footage of Bush to confirm the stats, but he can be seen here trying to explain the game to the Queen.

His predecessor in office, Richard Nixon, was a football obsessive. He became such good friends with the Washington Redskins coach George Allen that during the 1971 season the president was invited by Allen to call an offensive play during a visit to a practice session at Redskins Park.

Nixon called an unusual reverse to the wide receiver. When the Redskins reached the NFC play-offs later that year, they were leading 10-3, and in the final minutes of the first half Allen again called the reverse — a play he never normally used because he thought it was a "trick play" (you couldn't make this up, could you?). It failed, the Redskins lost momentum and then the game, 24-20. Afterwards one Redskins player claimed that Allen had received "executive orders" to call the reverse, and while the allegation was never confirmed (or denied) by Allen, many commentators alleged that Nixon did indeed phone the coach with instructions during the first quarter.

In his book First Off The Tee, Don Van Natta claims Nixon cheated at golf , throwing the ball out of deep rough on to the fairway. Really though you wonder if the stories are just being shaped to fit the man's legacy. There's certainly considerably less evidence that Nixon was a cad on the course than there is that Bill Clinton was.

Clinton is infamous for taking repeated 'Billigans' each time he mishit, claiming each shank was a simple practice swing. Tiger Woods told this story about playing a round the two men played together:

"President Clinton rolls one in the bushes, so then hits another one off the tee ... right in the middle of the fairway, hits a nice little wedge shot up there to about, I don't know, 6-7 feet. I hit a bad pitch, I blasted it by about 12 feet. ... Then all of the sudden, he does one of these," Woods gestures picking up a ball, "It was 6-7 feet and he walked off the green ... So I'm sitting in the cart. He's writing down the numbers, I happen to kind of ..." Woods leans back as if reading a scorecard over someone's shoulder, "Woods 4, Clinton 3. Interesting maths." With 14 of the last 17 presidents playing golf, Clinton was reputedly driven by a desire not to be seen as the Duffer in Chief.

JFK kept a lot of secrets, and his golf habit was certainly one of them. His predecessor, Dwight Eisenhower, spent so much time on the golf course (often partnering Bob Hope) that he was accused of wanting to introduce a "36-hole working week". Keen to avoid the accusation that he was similarly work-shy, JFK kept quiet about the fact that he was so keen on the game he could get around in under 80. His secret passion was only revealed, according to Van Natta, when "there were all these rumours about JFK and other extracurricular activities. He was sneaking off doing other things and [spokesman] Pierre Salinger had to tell people, 'No, no, no. He's playing golf.' That was better than the alternative."

No, if the US want a president to match-up to Putin on the mat, they'd have to go back to Salem County wrestling champion Abraham Lincoln, whose long reach made him, in his own words, "the second best wrestler in south Illinois". Sadly there's no YouTube footage of his famous fight with Jack Armstrong. Shame.